The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: The Chronicles of Narnia

Lucy is the first to find the secret of the wardrobe in the professor's mysterious old house. At first her brothers and sister don't believe her when she tells of her visit to the land of Narnia. But soon Edmund, then Peter and Susan step through the wardrobe themselves. In Narnia they find a country buried under the evil enchantment of the White Witch.

The Hobbit

Like every other hobbit, Bilbo Baggins likes nothing better than a quiet evening in his snug hole in the ground, dining on a sumptuous dinner in front of a fire. But when a wandering wizard captivates him with tales of the unknown, Bilbo becomes restless. Soon he joins the wizard’s band of homeless dwarves in search of giant spiders, savage wolves, and other dangers. Bilbo quickly tires of the quest for adventure and longs for the security of his familiar home. But before he can return to his life of comfort, he must face the greatest threat of all.

The Jungle Book I & II

Tales of Mowgli, the boy raised by animals in the exotic jungles of India; Rikkitikkitavi, a courageous young mongoose who battles the sinister black cobra Nag; Toomai, the boy who works with elephants; and more will delight listeners both young and old. These classic stories brim with adventure and thrills as the lively characters fend off ferocious tigers and deadly snakes, slip through the jungle to watch elephants dance, and seek refuge from dangerous hunters.

Howl's Moving Castle

A Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book and ALA Notable and Best of the Year in Young Adult Fiction, Howl's Moving Castle is by acclaimed fantasy writer Diane Wynne Jones amd was transformed into an Academy Award nominated animated motion picture by Hayao Miyazaki. On a rare venture out from her step-mother's hat shop, Sophie attracts the attention of a witch, who casts a terrible spell transforming the young girl into an old crone.

Jane Eyre

Following Jane from her childhood as an orphan in Northern England through her experience as a governess at Thornfield Hall, Charlotte Brontë's Gothic classic is an early exploration of women's independence in the mid-19th century and the pervasive societal challenges women had to endure. At Thornfield, Jane meets the complex and mysterious Mr. Rochester, with whom she shares a complicated relationship that ultimately forces her to reconcile the conflicting passions of romantic love and religious piety.

White Fang

In the desolate, frozen northwest of Canada, a lone wolf fights a heroic daily fight for life in the wild. But after he is captured and cruelly abused by men, he becomes a force of pure rage. Only one man sees inside the killer to his intelligence and nobility. But can his kindness touch White Fang?

Dragonflight: Dragonriders of Pern

On the beautiful planet Pern, colonized for centuries, Land Holders and Craftsmen have traditionally tithed food and supplies to the dragonweyrs to which they are bound. In times past, the mighty telepathic dragons and their riders were the only protection from the dreaded, life-threatening Thread. Now those times may be returning....

The Secret Garden

When Mary Lennox's parents die from cholera in India, the spoiled orphan is transplanted to her uncle's 600-year-old gloomy and secretive estate in England. She is certain that she is destined for misery at Misselthwaite Manor. However, she soon discovers an arched doorway into an overgrown garden, locked shut since the death of her aunt 10 years earlier.

The Pickwick Papers

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (commonly known as The Pickwick Papers) is the first novel by Charles Dickens. The book became the first real publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books and other merchandise.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

Captain Arthur Hastings, invalided in the Great War, is recuperating as a guest of John Cavendish at Styles Court, the "country-place" of John's autocratic old aunt, Emily Inglethorpe - she of a sizeable fortune, and so recently remarried to a man 20 years her junior. When Emily's sudden heart attack is found to be attributable to strychnine, Hastings recruits an old friend, now retired, to aid in the local investigation. With impeccable timing, Hercule Poirot, the famous Belgian detective, makes his dramatic entrance into the pages of crime literature.

My Man Jeeves

A new Jeeves audiobook is cause for celebration, especially when the stories are not available in print. This hilarious installment of the inimitable manservant Jeeves and his twit of an employer, Bertie Wooster, includes the earliest stories written by the master of the pen, prank, and pun. The stories are woven together with original material performed by Martin Jarvis.

Anne of Green Gables

With all of the pluck and charm of its eponymous young hero, Rachel McAdams (The Notebook, Spotlight, Midnight in Paris) delivers a spectacular reading of Montgomery's beloved bildungsroman. In moments both funny and bittersweet, McAdams' voice is imbued with the spark that has made Anne a much-loved symbol of individualism and cheer for over a century.

Neverwhere

Richard Mayhew is an unassuming young businessman living in London, with a dull job and a pretty but shrewish fiancée. Then one night he stumbles upon a girl lying on the sidewalk, bleeding. He stops to help her, and his life is changed forever. Soon he finds himself living in a London most people would never have dreamed of: a city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels. It is a world that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth of sewer canals and abandoned subway stations.

Without Remorse

His work for the CIA is brilliant, cold-blooded, and efficient, but who is he? In a harrowing tour de force, phenomenally best-selling author Tom Clancy shows how an ordinary man named John Kelly crossed the lines of justice and morality to become the CIA legend known as Mr. Clark. It is an unforgettable journey into the heart of darkness, without mercy - without remorse.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Dorian Gray, a handsome and narcissistic young man, lives thoughtlessly for his own pleasure. One day, after having his portrait painted, Dorian makes a frivolous Faustian wish: that he should always remain as young and beautiful as he is in that painting, while the portrait grows old in his stead.

The wish comes true, and Dorian soon finds that none of his wicked actions have visible consequences. Realizing that he will appear fresh and unspoiled no matter what kind of life he lives, Dorian becomes increasingly corrupt. Only the portrait grows degenerate and ugly, a powerful symbol of Dorian's internal ruin.

The Foundations of Western Civilization

What is Western Civilization? According to Professor Noble, it is "much more than human and political geography," encompassing myriad forms of political and institutional structures - from monarchies to participatory republics - and its own traditions of political discourse. It involves choices about who gets to participate in any given society and the ways in which societies have resolved the tension between individual self-interest and the common good.

Atlas Shrugged

This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world - and did. Is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he fight his hardest battle not against his enemies, but against the woman he loves? Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's magnum opus and launched an ideology and a movement. With the publication of this work in 1957, Rand gained an instant following and became a phenomenon. Atlas Shrugged emerged as a premier moral apologia for capitalism, a defense that had an electrifying effect on millions of readers (and now listeners) who had never heard capitalism defended in other than technical terms.

Freakonomics: Revised Edition

Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life, from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing, and whose conclusions turn the conventional wisdom on its head. Thus the new field of study contained in this audiobook: Freakonomics. Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.

Lincoln

In the best-selling tradition of Truman, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Herbert Donald offers a new classic in American history and biography - a masterly account of how one man's extraordinary political acumen steered the Union to victory in the Civil War, and of how his soaring rhetoric gave meaning to that agonizing struggle for nationhood and equality.

I Am Legend

In I Am Legend, a plague has decimated the world, and those unfortunate enough to survive are transformed into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Robert Neville is the last living man on earth. Everyone else has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood. By day, he stalks the sleeping undead, by night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.

The Phantom of the Opera

The story begins with an investigation into some strange reports of an "opera ghost", legendary for making the great Paris opera performers ill-at-ease when they sit alone in their dressing rooms. Some allege to have seen the ghost in evening clothes moving about in the shadows. Nothing is done, however, until the disappearance of Christine during her triumphant performance.

The Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov tells the stirring tale of four brothers: the pleasure-seeking, impatient Dmitri; the brilliant and morose Ivan; the gentle, loving, and honest Alyosha; and the illegitimate Smerdyakov: shy, silent, and cruel. The four unite in the murder of one of literature's most despicable characters - their father. This was Dostoevsky's final and best work.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Clare and Henry have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was 36. They were married when Clare was 23 and Henry was 31. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.

A Day's Read

Join three literary scholars and award-winning professors as they introduce you to dozens of short masterpieces that you can finish - and engage with - in a day or less. Perfect for people with busy lives who still want to discover-or rediscover-just how transformative an act of reading can be, these 36 lectures range from short stories of fewer than 10 pages to novellas and novels of around 200 pages. Despite their short length, these works are powerful examinations of the same subjects and themes that longer "great books" discuss.

Publisher's Summary

Narnia...where the woods are thick and cool, where the Talking Beasts are called to life, a new world where the adventure begins.

Digory and Polly meet and become friends one cold, wet summer in London. Their lives burst into adventure when Digory's Uncle Andrew, who thinks he is a magician, sends them hurtling to...somewhere else. They find their way to Narnia, newborn from the Lion's song, and encounter the evil sorceress Jadis, before they finally return home.

This was the sixth book written in The Chronicles of Narnia. It now stands as the first book in the series.

Our family had such a good time listening to Robert Stanek's "The Kingdoms and the Elves of the Reaches" we recently started "The Chronicles of Narnia." We've read all these authors' works in novels but this is our first time listening to the audio books.

We had a bit of trouble finding the books on Audible. When we click C.S. Lewis we mostly found his christain writing works, like the "Screwtape Letters." The only way we could find "The Chronicles of Narnia" books was to click the link provided in the descriptive text of the books.

"The Magician's Nephew: is the sixth narnia book published, but the first in time order, so you should listen to this one first.

The best listening order is:

The Magician's Nephew
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Horse and His Boy
The Last Battle

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is the novel they are basing the new Chronicles of Narnia movie on. Happy listening!

Like the remainder of the books in the Narnia series this one is quite enjoyable. Unfortunately, each of the audiobooks in the series has been done by a different reader. This breaks up the continuum a little, but Kenneth Brannaugh does a spectacular job with this story.

As it is thematically the first book and in my opinion the best read this book makes a fine introduction to the Narnia series.

How did the lamp get into Narnia? Who is the White Witch and how did she come to Rule Narnia? How did Narnia come to be? Why was the Wardrobe special? All these are answered in this first book of the Chronicles of Narnia. My son and I enjoyed it just as much as The Lion, The Witch, & the Wardrobe. The Magician's Nephew will almost stand up on its own, except for a few references made by C.S. Lewis to LWW. If you only read books 1 & 2, it would still be a complete experience. Though, I recommend reading LWW first, then MN. It feels better that way, but that is only MY opinion.

What a wonderful story and Kenneth Branaugh is exceptional in his telling of this story. At moments I forgot I was listening to a single story-teller and instead heard a cast of characters, each with their own accents. I only wish Mr. Branaugh was reading the rest of the series!

The idea of visiting world by jumping into ponds, climbing between connected buildings through the rafters, the mad uncle and evil queen have stayed in my dreams since childhood and provoked many hours of thought.

A great book for young adult or old. Timeless and one of my all-time favorites.

I grew up reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (LWW) and watching the cartoon version quite often. I loved it. I also read, Silver Chair, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Horse and His Boy, but I never read The Magicians Nephew. I don't know why.

I wish I had read this book first. It gives you, in my humble opion, critical information if you are intested in reading any other book. This book was not written first, but in Narnia years (the place where it all takes place) it starts at the beginning, Narnia year 0. It explains the creation of Naria and from where the White Witch, Jadis, came.

The Magician's Nephew is a great start to the classic Narnia series and this audiobook is especially worthwhile thanks to Kenneth Branagh's superb narration. This book is the first chronologically in the Narnia series, although I believe Lewis wrote it last. Its a great introduction to one the absolute best series in children's literature. Highly recommended.

I must disagree with the previous reviewers who stated the order according to which the books should be read. Although it is the chronological order, it is not the order the author intended the books to be read. And, in fact, reading The Magician's Nephew first spoils much of the reading.
The proper order to reading the books should be:

1 - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
2 - Prince Caspian
3 - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
4 - The Silver Chair
5 - The Horse and His Boy
6 - The Magician's Nephew
7 - The Last Battle